Prospectus

[BRIGHT WILLIAM]

WRITTEN LANGUAGE & LITERACY (WLL)
A journal forthcoming from
John Benjamins Publishers, Amsterdam

A new journal, entitled Written Language & Literacy (WLL), is to be issued
by John Benjamins Publishers, Amsterdam, under the editorship of Prof.
William Bright of the University of Colorado, Boulder. The journal will
contain articles, book reviews, and brief notes. It will be published
initially in two issues per year, totaling about 300 pages, and including
book reviews as well as articles. Information about subscription rates
etc. will be distributed by the publishers in the near future.

SUBJECT MATTER. The journal will be concerned with two major aspects of
written language: (a) the structures, histories, typologies, and functions
of the writing systems (scripts) used by the languages of the world; and
(b) literacy, i.e. the institutionalized use of written language, from the
interdisciplinary viewpoints of linguistics, anthropology, sociology,
psychology, education, literature, and book arts. These closely linked
fields have recently come to increasing attention among scholars, as is
shown by the recent publication of The World's Writing Systems, ed. by P.
T. Daniels & W. Bright (New York: Oxford University Press); the
encyclopedic Schrift und Schriftlichkeit ("Script and literacy", 2 vols.,
Berlin: de Gruyter); The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, by
Florian Coulmas; and a new monographic series on literacy, "Studies in
written language & literacy,", ed. by Brian Street and Ludo Verhoeven
(Amsterdam: Benjamins).

SAMPLE TOPICS. Typology of scripts; historical development of scripts;
descriptive analysis of scripts; decipherment of ancient scripts; formal
and functional relationships between scripts and spoken languages;
semiotics of written language (as contrasted with speech); pragmatics of
written language; invention of scripts; adaptation of scripts to new
languages; orthographic design and reform; psycholinguistic and
neurolinguistic aspects of the processes of writing, reading, and
literacy; calligraphic and typographic adaptations of scripts; cultural,
social, psychological, and political implications of scripts; related
notational systems (numerical, mathematical, musical etc.);
ethnolinguistic aspects of literacy (as contrasted with orality);
sociolinguistics of literacy; cognitive models of script choice and of
literacy; interaction between the literate and non-literate worlds;
cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies of literacy; the roles of
written, printed, and computationally processed language with respect to
spoken language and human life.

THE EDITOR. William Bright taught linguistics and anthropology at UCLA
from 1959 to 1988; since then he has been associated with the University
of Colorado, Boulder. He was editor of the journal Language from 1966 to
1988, served on the editorial board of the book arts journal Fine Print
(San Francisco), and is currently editor of the sociolinguistic journal
Language in Society (Cambridge U. Press).

EDITORIAL BOARD. The editorial board will include three Associate Editors,
who will provide consultation on editorial policy in both general and
particular cases: Janet Shibamoto Smith (Dept. of Anthropology, University
of California, Davis), Brian Street (King's College, London, England), and
Ludo Verhoeven (School of Education, University of Nijmegen, The
Netherlands). In addition, there will be fifteen Advisory Editors, to whom
specific manuscripts will be regularly referred:

Niko Besnier, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Bigelow & Holmes, Kula, Maui, Hawaii.
Florian Coulmas, Chuo University, Tokyo.
Peter T. Daniels, Chicago.
Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University.
Martha Macri, University of California, Davis.
Lise Menn, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Anna Morpurgo Davies, Oxford University.
David Olson, Ontario Institute for Studies of Education, Toronto.
Richard Salomon, University of Washington.
Ronald Scollon, City University of Hong Kong.
William Smalley, Hamden, CT.
Sumiko Sasanuma, International University of Health & Welfare, Ohtawara,
Japan.
Daniel Wagner, University of Pennsylvania.
William S-Y. Wang, University of California, Berkeley.

EDITORIAL POLICY: WLL will aim to encourage international and
interdisciplinary contributions, to be open to a broad variety of
theoretical views, and to give preference to work which integrates data
with conceptual and methodological concerns.

MANUSCRIPTS should be submitted in 3 copies to William Bright, Editor,
1625 Mariposa, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA. For further information,
contact brightw at spot.colorado.edu.